them very disorderly. . . . I found poor Woodman lying-in in the common ward, where she had been suddenly taken ill; herself and little girl were each doing very well. She was awaiting her execution at the end of the month. What can be said of such sights as these? . . . I read to Woodman, who is not in the state of mind we could wish for her; indeed, so unnatural is her situation that one can hardly tell how, or in what manner, to meet her case. She seems afraid to love her baby, and the very health which is being restored to her produces irritation of mind.
This last entry furnishes, incidentally, proof of the barbarity of the laws of Christian England at that time. Human life was of no account compared with the robbery of a few shillings, or the cutting down of a tree. This matter of capital punishment, in its turn, attracted the attention of the Quaker community, together with other philanthropic individuals, and the Statute Book was in time freed from many of the sanguinary enactments which had, prior to that period, disgraced it.
By this time notoriety began to attend Mrs. Fry's labours, and she was complimented and stared at according to the world's most approved fashion. The newspapers noticed her work; the people at Court talked about it; and London citizens began to realise that in this quiet Quakeress there dwelt a power for good. Given an unusual method of doing good, noticed by the high in place or power, together with praise or criticism by the papers, and, like Lord Byron, the worker wakes some morning to find himself or herself famous. But growing fame did pot agree with Elizabeth Fry's moral or spiritual nature. She possessed far too noble a soul to be pleased with it; her responsibility and her success, except so far as they affected the waits she desired to bless, were matters for her own conscience, and her God. She
